Thursday, January 17, 2008

One turkey sandwich, please

Make mine to go.

In his Trentonian column on Wednesday, January 16, local scribe L. A. Parker compared City Council’s long-awaited action on the residency waiver to their inability to construct a decent turkey sandwich with the ingredients set out before them.

Parker, who is not known for his objectivity when it comes to the actions of the Doug Palmer administration, admonished the six members of Council who voted to give the Mayor seven days to rescind his action regarding Police Director Joe Santiago’s residency.

L. A. decried the hours spent discussing and avoiding action on this one issue when so many other items need to be addressed. And Parker is right on that, there are a lot of other issues to be dealt with.

a) the City’s infrastructure is not in good shapeb) housing enforcement (indeed, enforcement of all laws in general) is more lax than it should bec) Our schools are physically falling apart and the school administration is failing our children, despite the millions of dollars poured into the system by the state (this is not a Council problem per se, but it still needs to be dealt with).d) No matter what the Mayor, Director Santiago, or their respective spin doctors say, public safety in Trenton is not better now than it was 40 years ago. It is not even better now than it was 40 months ago.e) We still have no economic opportunities for unskilled city residents and no prospects of attracting a major employer to the area in at least part because of points c and d above

What Mr. Parker fails to acknowledge is that after 17+ years of the same bullying, arrogant, administration the state of the city of Trenton is not totally Council’s fault. Indeed, if you follow the money and support that Mr. Palmer has given to “his team” of council people, logic tells you that implicit in that funding and endorsement was that they would support his agenda and personal whims.

Of course, Mr. Palmer and Mr. Parker would, along with the council people who received the Mayor’s largesse, deny that there was ever any intent to co-opt the legislative branch of city government to do the executive branch’s bidding.

If that were truly the case, why would Mr. Parker make snarky remarks about a council majority that found its voice?

So what, it took them awhile. But they made a turkey sandwich and it tastes pretty good. Maybe they’ll get comfortable in the kitchen and start making more. If Mr. Palmer continues to ignore the law for his own selfish and egotistical reasons, maybe Council can cook up another sandwich and send him packing as well.

It is obvious Doug doesn’t want to be here anymore and we certainly can’t afford his poor leadership any longer.

As columnist, Mea Kaemmerlen of the Times wrote this morning, “Trenton -- beleaguered and beloved -- deserves an energetic, intelligent, inspired, workaholic leader.”